The debates about whether or not the man killed in the US drone strike in Balochistan was Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour is over. We are not in the next phase of the cycle where arguments about violation of sovereignty, legality of drones and counter-productivity would be vivid in the media chatter. The last phase of this comes when issues are lost into oblivion. Pakistanis are well-practised in that aspect.
It is no surprise that the Afghan leadership and their intelligence agency had quickly claimed that the news of Mullah Mansour’s death in Pakistan is authentic. It serves to vindicate their argument that Pakistan harbours militant leaders on its soil that are hostile to Afghanistan. Some of the journalists would treat the tweet confirming his death as a divine verse.
President Barack Obama announced that Mullah Mansour was killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan. The drone strike was unique in two respects: the CIA didn’t operate it and it wasn’t confined to the tribal areas of Pakistan. Pakistan is not a declared battlefield but I will come to that later. Somewhere, someone is against the peace process in the region. When efforts were made at achieving peace in July last year at Murree, the news of Mullah Omar’s death was leaked. The Taliban backed off from the talks and a leadership crisis ensued. The news broke to break the peace process.
Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a drone strike when Pakistani government was in the process of making peace talks with him to secure peace inside Pakistan. A majority of the politicians across the Pakistani political spectrum denounced the strike as the death of peace. Now it is a drone that has broken the peace process. The US claims that Mullah Mansour was against the peace process inside Afghanistan. That he was against peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Therefore, he was killed so that peace is achieved. I wonder why the US didn’t then spare Mehsud when he was making overtures for peace.
The drone strike that took out Mullah Mansour is strikingly similar to the one that killed Mehsud in that both happened while there was an ongoing effort aimed at achieving peace. On May 18, 2016 the Quadrilateral Coordination Group held its meeting. There was not much zeal, yet as some would say talks are better than no talks. President Obama claims that Mullah Mansour was an impediment to peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government; however, it requires a great amount of shortsightedness to not realise that Mullah Haibatullah Akhounzada would not be different. One of the first announcements that came after he was chosen as the new leader of the Taliban was the vow to continue the fight. Furthermore, being his deputy Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the Haqqani network has more sway over soldiers and holds significant battlefield powers.
The Haqqani network has proven to be lethal and destructive toward American and coalition forces in Afghanistan. It has killed a large number of American soldiers using landmines, suicide bombers and so forth. The US has declared the Haqqani network as a terrorist organisation. Anyone with their grey cells still working would conclude that this one drone strike would unite the Taliban and make them against peace talks. I wonder if the CIA provides Obama with this information in his daily presidential brief and if so, how does he feel about authorising this strike?
Finally, having lived for over six years in America I love the promise of freedom, justice, and democracy this great country offers. Anyone who is accused of a crime is given a due process. Every individual — doesn’t matter how influential — gets a day in court. Yet, in the US no due process is ever given to anyone who is killed with a drone strike. It is an erosion of American values for which the American nation stands. Violating the sovereignty of Pakistan is a violation of the international norms.
The drone strikes are a violation of the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) since Pakistan is not a declared battlefield. The CIA has been conducting these strikes in Pakistan since it is a civilian agency and they ‘can neither confirm nor deny’ the existence of the drone campaign because of the CIA’s need for secrecy. Furthermore, in order for an attack to be in harmony with the IHL, the threat has to be imminent, there has to be no moment for deliberation. No other means have to be available to tackle the threat. The attack unleashed has to be proportional to the threat posed. In the western legal code, one is innocent until proven guilty. With drone killings, however, the victim is criminal until proven innocent, which is usually after the death. It is not just the death of a terrorist, or of peace. It is death of democracy at home here in America.
The writer is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Houston, and he teaches political science at the Lone Star College in Houston